Consumer electronics are a joke. It’s everyone’s fault but mine. You assholes.
That’s the title of a Gizmodo editorial, written by former editor Joel Johnson, that thousands of gadget geeks are waking up to during their morning RSS read. The article is likely the most beautiful feature ever posted to that site.
And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose.
I quit reading Engadget and Gizmodo quite some time ago because of the signal to noise ratio, which is quite disenfranchising for a self-proclaimed gadget geek. I’ve preferred to focus my time on sites such as Techdirt, Boing Boing, Lifehacker (and good ole Slashdot). Sites with a better chance of seriously improving my ability to be a geek. Stuff that matters.
Get it together: every single one of these consumer electronics companies should be approached as the enemy. They work for us. Hold their feet to the fire when they say their product is going to change even a small part of our lives. Circle back again in six months when they’re shilling the incremental upgrade and ask them why the last version didn’t cut the mustard. Step out of your blogging trench and ask yourself what your responsibility is to the tens of thousands of idiots who are reading this site right now to determine what they should spend their next paycheck on.
Hopefully Joel’s column serves as the rally cry we so desperately need to convince the squadron of complacent fanboys currently driving the market to make a stand for the quality, functionality, and value that consumers deserve.